Chortles.

I was looking over articles on nytimes the other day. Articles about the Japanese Asset Price Bubble (baburu keiki) from the first years after the events. Everyone thought that this or that fancy government capital infusion would make the bubble end within a year. In other words: in 1992, people thought it'd be over in 1993. In 1993, they thought it'd be over by the end of the year, or by 1994, or perhaps early 1995. But we know what happened there.

It's hard to tell from the article if this reflects the overall reality in the Manhattan real estate market, or if this is just a real estate industry PR piece.

THE panic in the Manhattan real estate market of the winter of 2009 lifted in the last few weeks, brokers say ...

Color me confused - is this a hypothetical piece about the market six months from now?

In an economy that is as abstracted from items of real value as ours is, it's "over" when enough people think that it is over, which makes the title all the more ironic.